Online Security

This is where scammers use online information or conversations to gather personal information, and then use this information to ask you to confirm your identity.

By using specific details about you, the criminal can be very convincing and trick people into divulging more information, such as account numbers, passwords and the answers to security questions.

A form of social engineering, phishing is either generic or specific, and takes on many forms. They all essentially seek the same outcome, i.e. that you reveal sensitive or confidential personal information by:

• Threatening to revoke access to your account if you do not act immediately
• Promising you a reward for logging into your account via the link provided
• Indicating there is a confidential update that you can only retrieve by entering in your credentials
• Physically getting you to do something, e.g. allow access to a building
• Inducing you to download a file that contains malicious software (malware).

As mentioned, phishing can be across different channels, including:

• Smishing, which is where people are targeted by text or SMS messages
• Spear-phishing (also known as whaling), which is a highly targeted phishing attack masquerading as a legitimate email
• Vishing, which is by phone or voice.

Often used in conjunction with social engineering, spoofing recreates emails, text messages and phone calls to deceive the recipients. Email addresses – from third parties or within your company – can be spoofed, as can phone extensions.

Malware is software that is designed to steal information or money. There are broadly four types of mal(icious) + (soft)ware:

1. Viruses: attached to a separate piece of software, it reproduces and ‘infects’ when that software is run
2. Worms: these are similar to viruses, but don’t need human interaction to cause damage
3. Trojans: as with the original wooden horse, these appear to be legitimate pieces of software that allow criminals access to information
4. Grayware: these are unwanted applications that limit the performance of computers and systems, leading to security risks.

Ransomware (where you need to pay a ransom to enable it to be removed) and spyware (hidden programs that collect information to distribute via the internet to criminals) are the most concerning of all malware.